Spice Stellar Pad Mi-1010 Review

The lower end tablet segment has been seeing a lot of entrants lately with offerings from the likes of MicroMax, Zync amongst others. We’re now seeing the next generation of budget tablets which are increasingly providing features seen only in their higher end kin. Today we’ll be taking a look at the Spice Stellar Pad Mi-1010.

Unboxing

The box contents are nothing extraordinary. Check out the unboxing video below to get an idea of the contents.

Inside the packaging you’ll find :

Spice Stellar Tablet

Cleaning Cloth

Power Adapter

MicroUSB cable

USB OTG Cable

Documentation

Hardware

Before we talk about the hardware in detail, i think its fair to mention that the Spice Stellar is one of the nicest looking low cost tablets i’ve got my hands on. The hardware looks and feels solid. The front of the Spice Stellar Mi-1010 is dominated by a 10 inch screen. There are no buttons here as the entire interface makes use of onscreen controls.

The back is finished in a matte silver material. Spice has used high quality plastics here and you’ll be hard pressed to find anything to complain about here, certainly not at this price point.

There are two slits for speakers while a 3MP camera sits proud. The camera is a bit of a mixed bag and we’ll have more on it in the section below. There is a minimal amount of Spice branding at the center and towards the lower half.

Over on the right side we have a bevy of ports which provide additional connectivity options like a USB On The Go port, microSD expansion port. A 2.5mm port is provided for charging up the tablet with the included charger.

Additional buttons can be found at the top of the tablet. The power button and volume controls can be seen here. The buttons offer a decent amount of tactile feedback and were never a cause for complaint. Over all we were more than satisfied with the hardware quality here. The tablet is on the heavier side but feels extremely reassuring due to the use of high quality plastics. There were no creaks anywhere even on applying stress and we’re quite certain the tablet will hold up your day to day use and abuse.

Screen

It does not have the highest resolution screen but the 1280×800 resolution is usable and right in line with its competitors. What is different here is the inclusion of a high quality IPS panel.

The Spice Stellar Mi-1010 has a vibrant and bright panel which retains visibility even when outdoors. The wide viewing angles mean that you’ll easily be able to watch movies and photos with family and friends. The touch sensitivity is fantastic and we didn’t find anything to complain about there. Sure, the resolution could be higher but as it stands, this is one of the best screens we’ve seen till date on an entry level tablet. Worth noting is that there’s a slight amount of backlight bleeding from the edges but not enough to be a concern.

Connectivity

We’ve previously mentioned that the tablet has an HDMI output port and a USB OTG port as well which’ll let you plug in a 3G dongle. Additionally the tablet has WiFi built in as is the norm. Unfortunately bluetooth is missing and its something worth keeping in for mind while making your decision.

Battery Life

The 7600 mAh battery pack is powerful enough to provide about 6 hours of video playback. With intermittent usage we got almost 8 hours of usage time from the tablet over the course 3 days. While it doesn’t set any records we think battery life on the Spice Stellar Mi-1010 is good enough for most users out there.

Camera

The Spice Stellar Mi1010 is equipped with a 3MP shooter at the back and another camera up front for video calling.

The camera will do the job if you have nothing else on hand as long as there is enough ambient light and works well enough to shoot documents too.

Rear Camera Sample

We weren’t too impressed by the image quality from the rear camera but then again, this tablet is hardly going to be your go to choice if you want to capture an important occasion.

Front Facing Camera Sample

We found the front camera to be more than adequate for the job. Video quality was bright and fairly noise free as long as there was sufficient ambient lighting.

Software

The Spice Stellar Mi 1010 ships with Android 4.1 JellyBean onboard. The operating system on the tablet is stock for the most part with a few extra widgets and applications bundled in .

As part of the pre installed application suite, you’ll find a few useful ones like the the Economic Times app for the latest financial news and Dhingana for regional music content. The bundle includes a few games as well.

JellyBean and its additions are well appreciated on the Spice Stellar Mi-1010. Project Butter makes things smooth all around. Overall, its refreshing to see the clean OS build which definitely helps in keeping performance speedy across the board.

Performance

The Spice Stellar Mi-1010 delivers excellent performance in terms of benchmarks. The phone can easily match and often outpace competing products in and above its class. The tablet is powered by a RockChip RK30 chip coupled with a Mali 400 GPU. 1GB of RAM should let you multitask with ease.

The Spice Stellar Mi-1010 is well ahead of its competition in the AnTuTu benchmark where it scores 6235 points.

Similarly in the Vellamo benchmark, the Spice Stellar compares favorably to the Galaxy Tab 2 and even the Nexus 7 by delivering a score of 1748. Benchmarks aren’t always indicative of real life performance but true to the figures above, the Spice Stellar Mi-1010 remains snappy for the most part during day to day usage. However there is a hint of lag or slow down if used for heavy multitasking , something worth keeping in mind. Overall we’re pretty satisfied with the performance of the tablet and were able to playback full HD content and browse even the most complex websites with ease.

Conclusion

The Spice Stellar Mi-1010 is definitely one of our favorite entry level tablets which brings a good balance between performance, looks and pricing to deliver a potent package.

If you want a well built tablet with great performance to boot, the Spice Stellar should definitely rank high in your list of tablets to consider. We were particularly impressed by the IPS display which had wide viewing angles and vibrant colors despite the lowly resolution. The Spice Stellar Mi-1010 is priced at Rs. 12,999.